« Pardon Our Dust . . . | Main | Nate Annotates Dell's New Powerbook Wannabe »

March 02, 2006

Switching To The Mac

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has been looking for feedback on the possibility of switching to the Mac after 20 years of PCs. Since I just made the switch myself, I sent him my advice. Here it is:

I switched from PC to Mac 6 months ago. I had all the same concerns as you - wasting my investment in PC skills and equipment, trusting one company for all my computing, paying the Mac premium, etc. The transition certainly hasn't been hassle-free, but it's definitely been worth it. The big differences are:

- The stability of OS X vs. Win XP. I practically never have to reboot OS X. If a single app locks up, I can always Force Quit without affecting other programs.

- The elegance of the Mac interface. I thought it wasn't that big a difference, but I was wrong. In all the little things, the Mac is a pleasure to use, while Windows is clunky.

- The Mac apps. Mail, Pages, and Safari are just better programs than their Microsoft counterparts - faster, smoother, with smarter feature sets. If you use iTunes on your PC, you already know how much better that is than MediaPlayer. The other Apple programs are similar improvements.

Then there's the pleasure of not sending any more of my money to Redmond. Not that Jobs & Co. are saints, but at least they've earned my dollars.

UPDATE: Over the weekend, Marshall took the plunge and bought his first Mac.

Posted by tedf at March 2, 2006 02:37 PM

Comments

Post a comment